Hear us Roar

Our guest this week is Kristin Owens (Elizabeth Sails, Rising Action Publishing, October 2024). We discuss how Kristin's critique group convinced her to write a novel instead of short fiction, how a trip on the Queen Mary inspired her setting, and how she learned to stop being kind to her main character and to get tough instead. Then we discuss how she's paired with cruise lines like Cunard to market her book, spending six months last year on ships where she lectures about the publishing industry and teaches classes.  
 
Kristin Owens holds a Ph.D. in higher education and is an award-winning faculty member with over 25 years university experience. Now a full-time writer in sticky southwest Florida, Kristin has over 100 bylines with celebrated magazines such as Wine Enthusiast, Writer's Digest, and 5280. Her personal essays have won Honorable Mention for the New Millennium Writing Awards, awarded finalist for the New Letters' award in nonfiction, and included in RISE! Colorado's Book of the Year. Her debut novel, Elizabeth Sails, was shortlisted for The Gilda Prize and Killer Nashville's Silver Falchion Award for Best Cozy. With her background in instructional design, she takes complex subjects and breaks them down into entertaining bite-sized pieces. Her high-energy presentations motivate writers to stick with it.
 
To learn more about Kristin, go to her website https://www.kristin-owens.com/

This week we talk with Faye Arcand (Inside Outside, indie published November 2024). Learn how a best-seller psychological suspense informed Faye's debut plot, how she delved into a fourteen-year-old's brain, and how having an agent didn't work out for her. Then we discuss the importance of an author website and how having a plan for marketing makes everything smoother. And don't miss her quirky secret—it's a doozy.
 
Faye Arcand is the author of the award-winning psychological suspense novel INSIDE OUTSIDE. Arcand spent several years working within the criminal justice system before  travelling the world. Every experience is fodder for her twisted writer brain. She's fascinated by the quirks and perspectives life presents as she peers through the lens of deviance, mental health, fear, or anything antisocial, weird, or different. When she's not eavesdropping on a conversations or observing from afar, you'll find her studying reality TV, chatting with her golden retriever Piper, or editing her upcoming thriller, Can You See Me? She lives somewhere in the wilds of British Columbia, Canada.
To learn more about Faye, go to https://fayearcand.com/

Our guest this week is Stephanie Claypool (A Thousand Tiny Stitches, Atmosphere Press, November 2024) Here how tips about outlining from both James Patterson and J.K. Rowling were key to Stephanie's finding a new way to approach her novel, which she wrote out in narrative form and on a spreadsheet first before drafting a word. Hear why she chose a hybrid press over a small press and how she plans to write a series centered not around her characters but around the town she invented for her debut.
 
Stephanie Claypool, a native of metro New York, weaves her diverse life experiences into stories that celebrate resilience and the surprising untapped capabilities that lie within us all. From London to San Diego and Annapolis, her journey eventually led her to call Pittsburgh home, where she lives with her retired Navy husband, her father, and a menagerie of beloved pets. Beyond her writing desk, Stephanie pursues passions as varied as her travels. An enthusiast of cooking and wine, fountain pens and notebooks, and fabrics and threads, her greatest joys are the simple things in life. As Vice President of Finance for the Women's Fiction Writers Association, Stephanie is an active member of the writing community. Her debut novel, A Thousand Tiny Stitches, was published in November 2024.
To learn more about Stephanie, go to https://stephanieclaypool.com/

This week we talk with Zelly Ruskin (Not Yours to Keep, She Writes Press, October 2024). We delve into the 3 unrelated parts of her past—her former career, an ex-boyfriend, and her own experiences with IVF—that coalesced into the spine of her debut novel, how she put off major surgery to finish her rough draft, and how she found her way into a male man character by reading Jane Austen. Hear her cautionary tale of sending out a manuscript too early and why she used both contests and an outside PR firm to market her book.
 
In her first career, Zelly was a social worker in the adoption and foster care field. From there, she owned an online retail store specializing in hand-painted children's gifts and party favors. Along the way, Zelly volunteered and raised funds for several non-profit organizations. In an alternate universe, she is probably an event planner. But once she moved to New York City, Zelly gave in to the compulsion to write women's fiction spiced with suspense about motherhood, relationships, loss and love. Her debut novel, Not Yours to Keep, published in 2024 and her second book,, One of Us Must Die ( She Writes Press) will publish in October 2026.
When she's not devising twisty plots, Zelly loves traveling, hiking, and is passionate about and volunteers for Brain Aneurysm Awareness. Her involvement in the cause is driven by personal experiences, including surviving an unruptured brain aneurysm, the tragic loss of a family member to a rupture, and supporting a friend in their recovery. 
To learn more about Zelly, go to https://zellyruskin.com/

Our guest this week is Kay Smith-Blum (Tangles, Black Rose Writing, December 2024). We discuss how two unrelated occurrences in one week—one a vivid dream, the second cocktails with an old friend—led Kay into a nine-month rabbit hole of research  about Hanford, WA, a former nuclear facility on the Columbia River which produced plutonium for the US nuclear weapons programs during the Cold War era. We also contrast the responses she got from agents (crickets) vs. small presses (10 out of 12 requests) when querying and how the best way to know how readers will react to your book is to let numerous critique groups read your book and give you feedback.
 
Kay Smith-Blum, a former fashionista and Seattle School Board President, launched her third career as a writer of mid-20th-century history in 2016. The recent upheaval over leaking radioactive waste tanks at the Hanford Nuclear site and an odd dream compelled her to write her debut novel, TANGLES.  A deeply human Cold War tale about the issues created by any type of nuclear production, TANGLES was recently honored as Best Historical Mystery/Suspense at the 2025 American Fiction Awards Book Fest, Best Debut Fiction by the American Writing Awards, 2025 Best Regional Fiction/West by the Nat'l Indie Excellence Awards and also named Book of the Year by the Literary Global Book Awards. Smith-Blum, a sunrise writer, has lived in Seattle for four decades. Smith-Blum also works out her writer's block in her sons' gardens and the nearest lap pool. A second novel is in the works.
To learn more about Kay, go to https://www.kaysmith-blum.com